


keep the home fires burning

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - World War I, Homecoming, Jazz Age, Multi, OT3, PTSD, Prohibition, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:45:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Whenever he falls asleep (hell, whenever he closes his eyes) he sees it all again: his boots sticking in a thick mire of mud and blood, the wide-open, unseeing eyes of dead soldiers, the stink and horror of the trenches. Every night in his sleep, with or without Darcy, he goes over the top.</i>
</p><p>**</p><p>A (post) World War I AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep the home fires burning

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here's another one of my funny little historical AUs.
> 
> This AU assumes that many of the events in _Captain America: The First Avenger_ occurred in much the same way they did in that film (the serum, the creation of Captain America, etc.), but places them before/during World War I instead of World War II. And in this 'verse, our boys get to come home. There's a graphic that goes with it [here](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com/post/69738039047/so-this-little-world-war-i-au-busted-its-way-out)
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful Merideath for looking this over. Hope you all like it.

*****

 

**1919**

 

**_Darcy_ **

 

Bucky comes home in the spring.

It stings – knowing that Steve is still somewhere in Germany, picking up the pieces the Kaiser left behind – but Project Rebirth had changed his body and his life, making him so damned indispensible that the Army couldn’t even send him back once the war had finally ( _finally_ ) ended.

In a series of letters, hastily written and sent from the front lines, Steve tries to tell Darcy what happened to Bucky – the boy they sent away before Erskine and his formula had found Steve. He tells her that Bucky was captured – tortured, maybe – and that he came back broken and haunted, with an unfamiliar physical strength. And later Steve writes to tell her about his arm – blown to pieces by shrapnel in the forests of Eastern France. 

Now, as she waits at the dock for him to disembark from the enormous oceanliner in front of her, she thanks God for that German artillery shell. She’ll never ( _ever_ ) tell him, but it means everything to have him back.

A line of the wounded disembark before her – carried out on cots or limping on crutches with missing legs. And then she sees him, standing on his own two feet, and she’s so damn _happy_ , she doesn’t even notice his empty left sleeve – folded at the elbow and pinned at the shoulder. 

She races up to him and flings her arms around his shoulders. Her hands fist in khaki wool; she can’t stop the desperate, wracking, grateful sobs that tear through her. Bucky folds his arm around her waist, tentatively at first, then tighter and tighter, until there’s not a centimeter of empty space between them. 

He turns his face into the joint between her neck and shoulder, and just above the edge of her collar she feels his lips brush against her skin. When she pulls back to look at him, she sees it – the thing Steve tried to warn her about. She sees that a piece of him has been chipped away. There’s a new darkness simmering just behind his eyes.

He and Steve’s tiny, drafty apartment is long gone, so she takes him back to the rooms she shares with her cousin, Jane, to sleep on their threadbare sofa. As they walk through the dirty, crowded streets – the same streets where the three of them grew up together, teasing and playing and wishing they could be young forever – their neighbors recognize him and welcome him home, letting their eyes linger on his stunted shoulder. Each encounter makes Bucky’s jaw clench and his shoulders tighten. The curious glances make Darcy’s gorge rise, too, but she keeps her head high and her smile on; her hand never leaves his elbow as she ushers him through the crowd to her apartment.

Bucky spends a week sleeping in their meager parlor, but night after night, Darcy hears the nightmares that wake him up, whimpering and clawing at his bedclothes. She doesn’t know if it’s the sixth or seventh night when she does it – creeps into the parlor to find him sitting in the dark, breathing hard with his elbow on his knee, his head in his hand, his white linen left sleeve hanging loose like a flag of surrender. He looks up when she enters.

She kneels in front of him. Her hands run across the hardened lines of his face, down his neck, to his shoulders. She remembers everything about him – the pies his mother used to make, his bright blue eyes, how he and Steve taught her to pitch, even though the other boys would never let her play in their pick-up baseball games. She’s cataloged every kindness he’s ever shown her, every time he’s touched her or smiled at her since the days when he wore short pants and she wore ribbons in her hair.

“Come to bed, Bucky,” she whispers, and ignores the surprised crease in his brow, “You’ll sleep better.”

“I—“ he shakes his head, “I’m all right here.”

Darcy stands and takes his hand. His palm presses warm against hers. 

“Come on. S’just sleepin’.”

A little curl of nerves inside her chest loosens when he stands and follows her to her room, sliding into her narrow bed and pulling her against his chest. She and Jane will be up in a few hours and off to work, but Darcy knows too much about Jane’s dalliances with the Norwegians in Bay Ridge for her to be worried about what she’ll think if she sees Bucky in her bed.

It feels wonderful ( _wonderful_ ), though – to feel his chest rise and fall under her cheek, to feel his arm wrapped heavy around her, to feel the brush of his legs against hers.

She hears him sigh. He lifts his hand to run across her hair.

“There’ll be no nightmares with you here, Darce.”

She smiles and turns her head up to look at him. His eyes are glassy in the shadowy dark. 

“Better not be,” she tries to smile, tries to imagine that this is only about comfort, that the closeness of him doesn’t make something in her chest tighten. “I’ll fight ‘em off if they come.”

A shaft of pale moonlight shows her a line of khaki against his chest, and she touches her fingers to it, pulling until two round aluminum tags emerge from below his shirt. She squints to read the words printed on them: his name, rank, and serial number. A wave of sadness floods through her. For the past year he hasn’t been hers – he gave himself to the Army and they gave him back to her in pieces.

She lifts one of the medallions to her lips, feels the ridges of metal bite into soft skin, and his arm tightens around her. Her eyes squeeze shut and he presses a kiss to her temple. Even though it cuts and burns its way through her, there’s a part of this melancholy that she’s determined to keep, as a reminder of how easy it is to lose him, to lose them both. 

She leans up to kiss his cheek, then settles her head on his shoulder.

“G’night, Darcy,” he murmurs, and she just shifts closer and lets her eyes fall closed.

 

*****

 

**_Bucky_ **

 

Darcy’s not wrong. 

The nightmares ease up when he’s in her bed, holding her, planting chaste kisses on her forehead and pretending he doesn’t want more. But they still come, and Bucky gets better at hiding them from her. Whenever he falls asleep (hell, whenever he closes his eyes) he sees it all again: his boots sticking in a thick mire of mud and blood, the wide-open, unseeing eyes of dead soldiers, the stink and horror of the trenches. Every night in his sleep, with or without Darcy, he goes over the top. 

It’s strange to be back in Brooklyn. In the Argonne, he had let himself become a monster, had let himself be the kind of person who kills other people, the kind of person who lives and acts out of a base fear of death. Now, he’s just a man.

Steve had been the only thing that kept him alive, with his hope and his strength. It tears Bucky up – knowing that he’s still over there, even if the war and fighting are done. He feels _left behind_ , in the way that Steve must have when he left for France. He and Darcy can swap stories about him for hours, though – all the scrapes and adventures of their shared childhoods – and the pain of missing him starts to feel a little less immediate.

It chafes that he has to rely on Darcy to support himself, and he sees the stern looks Jane gives him because of it. But he wasn’t the only soldier to come trudging home from the front, and between that and his missing arm, work is hard to come by. It’s a long year before he finds something steady, and even then it’s just running liquor for small-time bootleggers. He never tells Darcy where his money comes from, but after a while it’s enough for him to get his own place. He moves out because, even though he’s known Darcy his whole life, and even though being with her means _everything_ now, he can’t bear to impose. 

He still sees her though. Once a week, they watch a picture together in the city. It feels good – _normal_ – to take Darcy out. It feels like something he would have done if the war had never happened.

It’s in a darkened theater, sitting next to her with his pockets full of ill-gotten cash, when he kisses her for the first time. It starts simple, just a gentle press against her lips, with his arm folded against the back of her chair, because she had been too beautiful in the flickering light. But then he feels her hands on his shoulders and the tentative press of her tongue at the seam of his lips. 

Bucky thanks God that they’ve chosen balcony seats, and that the only other patron is sitting rows ahead of them and fell asleep halfway through the first reel, because he’s helpless to stop what happens next. 

The seat’s armrest is inconveniently placed, so Darcy nimbly climbs over it and into his lap, winding her arms around his neck. It’s like the breaking of a dam – her kisses are hot and unrelenting, the release of something that’s been built up for too long. Bucky’s hand is on her waist, her shoulders, her neck and hair. He wishes like hell he had two arms to wrap around her.

“Missed you,” she pants against his skin. “I wish…you hadn’t left.”

“Let’s get outta here,” he whispers, because he has utterly no sense of propriety when it comes to this woman, and because he feels like he’ll crawl out of his own skin if he can’t get more of this – more of _her_.

What follows is a series of moments: the feel of her hand in his as he pulls her out of the theater, the crowded subway where he could wrap his arm around her waist and pretend it was just to keep her steady, the walk up to his flat. The moment they’re inside, she lets him press her against the closed front door and kiss her, until she’s breathless and grinning, until half the pins that held her hair up have loosened and her cheeks are flushed and pink. Until she looks half-wild for him.

It takes all the strength he has, but he stops himself. He pulls away, turns on a lamp, sits her down at his little kitchen table and pours Canadian whiskey into a pair of glasses. He tries not to look too embarrassed about the creaking floorboards, the cracked wallpaper and scuffed furniture.

He doesn’t know why he tells her, except that he wants her to know _everything_ before she agrees to go any further with him. So he tells her about Steve, tells her in broad terms about what they shared in hidden corners and darkened trenches: furtive embraces, clandestine touches and hasty kisses that had left him aching for more.

Darcy’s eyes go wide, but she doesn’t curse him and storm out, and that _must_ be some kind of victory.

“Do you--,” she bites at her bottom lip, “Do you like girls?”

“Yeah,” he smiles, and for a moment he feels like himself again, “I like _you_.”

“But when Steve comes home…” she trails off and looks at her now-empty glass.

Bucky stands suddenly, wraps his arm around her and pulls her to her feet. The idea that she could be _less than_ anyone makes him bristle. Darcy melts against him, but her brow furrows.

“When Steve comes home, nothin,’” he growls, nuzzling at the side of her neck, “That’s got nothin’ to do with this. I just thought you should know that I’m—“

Bucky hesitates. There are a million endings to that sentence: _different, abnormal, wrong_.

Darcy shakes her head and moves her hands to the sides of his face. “You’re fine. Just fine.”

She smiles and kisses him, and he can’t help but smile back. He lifts her and sets her on the table, not minding that their glasses rattle as he lifts her skirt from her ankles to her hips.

It’s been so long since he’s had his fingers and mouth between a woman’s legs, since he’s touched and been touched, since he’s been hard and aching and pushed up inside a girl. And it’s not just any girl, it’s _Darcy_. Darcy, who he’s wanted since before he knew what wanting was, even if what he wanted with her was always mixed up in his mind with what he wanted with Steve.

After a while, it becomes routine to end the day with Darcy in his home, in his arms, and in his bed. Bucky wishes he was the kind of man who could get used to a thing like this – who could accept kindness and compassion and love without surprise.

But for now, he learns to look past his doubt and fear of losing her, at least long enough to imagine that he deserves her.

 

*****

 

**1921**

 

**_Steve_ **

 

It’s fall when Steve comes home.

Bucky and Darcy meet him at the train station, and seeing them again— he feels like he can breathe for the first time in months and months. He gets his arms around both of them at once. He smells Bucky’s cologne and cigarettes, and feels Darcy’s soft curves through the heavy fabric of her coat.

When he pulls away, Bucky grins at him, and it nearly knocks him over. The last time he saw Bucky, he had just lost his left arm. He’d been full of anger and grief, his eyes watery, his face pale and jaw trembling. Steve had thought he’d never see him smile again.

Darcy’s just as he remembers her. But then, no. She’s better. She’s cut her hair short – bobbed, like a movie star; she looks flushed and healthy and happy. The look she gives him – bright and mischievous – makes him remember the way she used to see him and smile at him, even though he was skinny and so ashamed of his own body. He remembers the first ( _only_ ) time she let him press his lips to hers, and the almost-painful ache that came with touching her.

They walk back to Bucky’s apartment with Darcy between them, her arms linked in theirs. She chatters away and Bucky beams down at her and everything is perfect.

Liquor might be illegal, but Bucky and Darcy seem to know every speakeasy and gin joint in the city. When they settle on one, Steve, still in his service uniform, finds himself the target of suspicious glances and hushed whispers. But Bucky just claps his back and wraps his arm around his shoulders. His endorsement seems to be enough, and the other patrons turn back to their drinks and conversation.

The two of them are at ease here – sitting at a tiny, round table, their faces lit up gold by a miniature oil lamp sitting on the surface between them. They laugh and tease him and each other as though the war never separated them. Steve wonders if it’s wrong – to let Captain America so publicly break the law, but no matter what Colonel Philips and Senator Brandt thought, there’s a deeper, older part of him that they can’t touch. A part that’s all Steve Rogers: a part that kissed Darcy Lewis behind O’Shea’s drugstore when they were both fifteen; a part that kissed Bucky Barnes on the eve of a day neither of them thought they would live to see the end of.

After a few drinks, Steve is still sober, but the two of them are relaxed and easy, touching each other’s arms and faces and hair. It’s not hard to tell something’s happened there. Steve can feel the warm glow radiated off of them – the shine of love and sex and belonging – and it makes him higher than drink ever could. 

When the thumping, riotous music becomes too much to resist, Bucky pulls Darcy onto the bar’s tiny, cramped dance floor. Even with the missing arm, he’s still light on his feet, and watching him move feels like the best kind of reassurance. Darcy mercifully waits until the band starts a song with a slow, languorous beat to pull Steve onto the floor; she remembers his two left feet. The way she presses against him sends a flood of nostalgia through him – not that he ever had her ( _really_ had her) like this before, but it’s the kind of nostalgia one gets for things they never had, but always knew they needed. He casts a wary glance in Bucky’s direction, and she sees it.

“Don’t worry so much,” she grins and presses her fingers to the crease in his brow, then pushes up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “You’re _home_ now.”

They take him back to Bucky’s. As soon as they’re inside, Bucky pulls Darcy close to him and kisses her, long and slow. Steve feels like he’s been set on fire; Darcy’s breathless sighs, the glimpse of Bucky’s tongue, pink and wet, as it dips into her mouth, make a hot flush spread from his chest to his neck. He thinks it would almost be enough just to _watch_ them – these people he has loved so much. He wonders if they would let him.

Steve pulls his cap from his head and turns it over in his hands. He’s meant to stay here – at Bucky’s – but he’s sure he could find somewhere to be to give them time alone. Even though he’d rather tear his own heart out than leave them, he’d do it if they asked him to.

But then Bucky’s arm darts out towards him; his fingers close around Steve’s wrist and pull. Steve stumbles into them and Bucky catches him behind the neck, pulling him down just a few inches. Darcy gasps when their mouths meet. Steve feels her hand clench on his bicep as Bucky licks into his mouth. He tastes like gin and Darcy; there’s a rushing between Steve’s legs and a roaring in his ears. 

Steve slides his arm around Bucky’s waist, just below Darcy’s, and fists a hand in his shirt. Bucky groans and pulls away from him, nipping at his lower lip and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He glances down at Darcy; a slow smile creeps over his face. 

“She’s the sweetest thing alive,” Bucky murmurs, moving behind her, winding his arm around her waist and hooking his chin on her shoulder, “Better than killers like us ought to have.”

“Hush,” she whispers back at him. Her eyes are fixed on Steve’s, though. Waiting.

Her fingers slide into the gaps of fabric between the buttons on his service coat. Suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter if she’s Bucky’s, or if Bucky’s his, or who _Steve_ belongs to. He lowers his mouth to hers and Darcy opens for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pushing her fingers into his hair. As she kisses him, she makes quick work of his coat and tie, letting both land on the floor.

It’s not at all like he remembers their last kiss – there’s no youthful nervousness or timidity. Darcy grinds her hips against his, scores her fingernails along his scalp until he moans. Steve keeps one hand tight on her hip, letting the other tangle in Bucky’s hair. He can just barely hear the obscenities Bucky’s whispering in her ear.

Darcy smiles against his mouth. “I’ll never get used to how tall you are now.”

He hears Bucky chuckle behind her. “You’ll get used to it, sweetheart.”

Darcy pulls him into the bedroom – a cramped space half-filled by their bed – and Bucky follows behind, turning on a lamp. She kisses him again, lifting his hands to the top button of her blouse while she fumbles with the clasp of her skirt. Steve works his way down the line of buttons slowly, letting his knuckles brush against the curve of her breasts. He can hear Bucky rustling behind him. Steve pulls himself away from her mouth.

“You sure about this?” he asks. He isn’t even sure what _this_ is, how any of _this_ works. He isn’t sure of much of anything, beyond a dim understanding of how hard he is, how much he wants them both. Darcy smiles.

“Sure are,” Bucky growls from behind him, reaching around his waist and palming Steve’s erection through his trousers. Steve groans and bucks his hips against the sudden pressure, reaching out for Darcy because he needs something to hang on to. His brain is fogged over with lust, but he manages to realize that she’s stripped off the blouse, skirt, and the slip under it, and his hands meet bare, warm skin.

“Christ,” Steve chokes out, letting his head drop forward. Darcy’s fingers unbutton the collar of his shirt; she licks a stripe from his collarbone to his jaw. “ _Christ_.”

Bucky circles around him to stand next to her, and Steve can see that he’s naked, too. The low light gleams off of her soft skin, and the gnarled flesh of Bucky’s left shoulder. The two of them stand before him like Adam and Eve, but instead of leading him into temptation, they’re leading him _home_. After the serum, after the fighting and death and pain, they’re guiding him to a place he’s always belonged: with them. 

Later, when Bucky’s pressed flush behind him, sucking bruising kisses onto his shoulders as he works his hips against Steve’s, every thrust pushing him deeper into Darcy, who’s all tight, wet heat and frantic moans, Steve knows that this is exactly what he’s spent a lifetime wanting without knowing how to ask for it. 

Later still, when the three of them are curled around each other, when Bucky’s asleep under his arm and Darcy’s tracing lazy patterns on his chest with her fingers, Steve knows that he’s just where he’s supposed to be.


End file.
